" ... human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights, once and for all ... "
Once upon a time someone said this in a speech and a sixth grader from Bangladesh read this in the newspaper (yeah, no internet back in those days) and thought why is this person just a first lady (and what the hell is a 'first lady', why is being someone's spouse is a position?)!
My dad showed me the headline as something very important, and at first I did not think of it as a big deal. I asked him, why was he so excited about this! Isn't that obvious? I mean, why did some 'first lady' have to announce that? like 'duh! what the fuss, everyone knows women are human, and therefore ... ' - but in a few days I saw a lot of conversation in the print media around this speech, op-eds in Bengali, that 'giving your wife the permission to work' is not 'women's right', that 'you are enjoying a lot of women's rights' is not a valid sentence, that there is no such thing as 'women rights' that is separate from basic human rights, once and for all.
